James M. Taylor, an environmental policy expert and a fellow at the Heartland Institute, said that global cooling is already happening. Based on figures provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, he noted that snow records from the last 10 years exceeded the records set in the 1960s and 1970s.

A sign of global cooling? This past “decade set a record for largest average global snow extent,” Taylor said.

Update: Over at Only In It For The Gold, Taylor attempts to justify his claim by pointing to a Steve Goddard cherry pick at WUWT. Goddard showed statistics for winter only and failed to mention what was happening to snow cover in spring and summer. In winter snow cover has not fallen significantly, but that’s because increased temperatures, while melting snow, also cause more evaporation and hence more snow to fall.

But here’s the bit that Goddard didn’t mention and Taylor was apparently unaware of. Spring and summer snow cover has fallen significantly:

I don’t know what’s more depressing. The sheer nonsense Heartland are coming out with in their desperate quest to pollute the world with their anti-science, or the sheer credulousness of Faux News’ reporting on the matter.

I wouldn’t like to speculate on how many lives Heartland’s bullshit has cost through their delaying things like anti-smoking legislation and I hate the thought that they’re still at it. I’d like to see them audited for a change.

These delayers should find out just what an ad hominem attack is. It is not calling out those discredited by association with fossil dirt money who use flawed arguments often lacking any vestige of sound science, sounding like science is not the same thing at all.

Each of the past four decades has been hotter than the decade before and each of these has set a new record in the instrumental record and quite likely in the past 2,000 years. Surface records and satellite records all agree that there has been warming in the past three decades. For this year so far, Jan-Apr has been the hottest on record and yet there was significant winter NH snow cover.

So it appears that Taylor is shooting himself in the snow shoe. Warmer temperatures are allowing more winter time snowfall which is expected in a warmer world. Keep these pro-AGW plots coming Mr. Taylor.

@14: The vast majority of deniers are genuinely ignorant of the science, but for a big subset of the rest, I put it down to cognitive dissonance rather than deliberately lying. Consciously or subconsciously, I think they’re putting their thinking skills on hold to avoid the terrifying concept that the science might actually be right.

People, they don’t care. They just don’t care. Whatever the long-term consequences, they’re so convinced that libertarian principles (freedom to fuck your neighbor) are morally superior to any other value system that they can’t see that “your neighbor” might be “yourself” when it comes to atmosphere, rivers, etc.

dhogaza.
Well put. If anyone wants confirmation, then have a look at the Heartland Institute website and listen to Delingpoles presentation.
He’s dining out on a politcal ideology that ignores the consequences of rapid climate change. In a ‘war’ that’s purely about their notion of ‘liberty’, they’ve targeted science as the first casulty.
His very presence on a pseudo scientific platform speaks volumes about the real goals of the PR campaign fought by this advocacy group.
As they keep reminding, the ‘court of public opinion’ is where the main battle is being waged regardless of the science and it’s where they wheel out their usual professional celebrities to perform with their smoke and mirrors. This is no more than a political public relations exercize for the willfully ignorant.

It should be obvious that snow falls in the winter, not the summer. To describe a summer as being “snowy” is nonsense.

NH winter snow extent is controlled by how far south snow falls (indicating colder winter temperatures) and summer snow extent is controlled by how far north it melts. The mechanisms are largely unrelated. Hansen and others say that the changes in summer snow cover are largely due to soot.

What you have failed to note is that changes in summer extent occurred in a one time shift in the 1980s That was most likely due to changes in ocean circulation, not CO2. You are misleading your readers by drawing a linear trend line through a step function.

Snow cover is not declining. Also, snow cover is declining, but it’s not due to global warming. It’s most likely due to soot. And it’s most likely due to ocean circulation. Argh! Just say that global warming is a hoax!

You are trying to change the subject, but to answer your question, the yellow line is the mean, not a trend line.

It should be obvious to anyone familiar with English that the word “snowiest” relates to the amount of snow falling, which occurs in the winter. Summers can not be described as “snowy” because there isn’t much or any snow falling.

>It should be obvious to anyone familiar with English that the word “snowiest” relates to the amount of snow falling, which occurs in the winter. Summers can not be described as “snowy” because there isn’t much or any snow falling.

Steve that is a stupid rationalistion. Your metric is not on snow fall. It is area of snow.

You are running away from the science Steve. Try sticking to the metrics you base your analysis on.

This is what I’d like to know: what is the point of trying to show that snow is increasing? I mean, temperatures are clearly increasing as measured by surface and satellites, right? So by trying to show an increase in snow are you trying to say that temperatures are not increasing?

It doesn’t even make sense. What exactly is your argument in logical form?

…or might be **if someone here had done that**. They talked about the measurements of **snow cover** in summer.

> …changes in summer extent occurred in a one time shift in the 1980s…

Looks kind of like a trend crossing a baseline to me. But then eyeballs are notoriously deceptive regarding statistics. How about you tell us why you think this graph demonstrates a “step change” as opposed to a “trend crossing a baseline”?

Steven Goddard has been shown to be wrong on a number of occasions. Has anyone here ever seen him admit he was wrong about anything?

At least Steve has the balls to predict this year’s minimum Arctic sea ice extent will be 500.000 km2 above last year’s (which was 5.25 million square km). I hope he’s wrong just to see if he’ll admit it. It would be much better all in all if he were right, of course.

I really want Steven Goddard to be right, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. WUWT = We Use Wishful Thinking.

>Some of the models predicted a significant decline in winter snow cover between 1990 and 2010.

1) How do you support his claim and 2) what level of “signficance” are you claiming was predicted in the snow cover change from 1990 to 2010? 3) How many of the nine moleds made this prediciton of a “significant decline in winter snow cover between 1990 and 2010.”

Even allowing the winter-only cherry-pick, there are discrepancies between the line graph of winter snow extent that Tim shows and the bar graph of winter snow extent that was shown (presumably by Goddard) over at WUWT. In the bar graph there are 3 winters in the 2000s that clearly exceed the 2nd highest winter in the 1970s. But in the line graph, the 2 highest winters in the 2000s are basically in a dead heat with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th highest winters in the 1970s.

Of course the winter-only cherry-pick is the least important from the point of view of climate feedbacks. Two words: “albedo feedback”. The most important time period is the 4 (maybe 6) months centered on the June solstice.

Monday, 20 March 2000
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually “feel” virtual cold.

All numbers were taken directly off the Rutgers web site. If you believe any of my math, numbers or graphs are incorrect, then prove it. Otherwise you are just engaging in the standard ad hominem approach which the CAGW religion is based on.

This discussion is lame beyond comprehension. Go tell your first grader that you used to have “very snowy summers” when you were a kid. He/she will correctly think that you are an idiot.

How does a glacial start Steve Goddard? With increasing summer snow cover in the N. Hemisphere.

No you are your ideologue friends at WFUWT are claiming that we have already started heading into a prolonged period of global cooling, some claim a glacial. Well, the data do not support that nonsense, and you know it, yet you continue to distort and lie and move the goal posts. All the while having the audacity and gaul to accuse real scientists of distorting and lying.

I compiled, in an earlier post, a list of contrarians who have distorted and/or made serious errors which have called their findings into question. Your name was on that list, and that was before you came here with more deception. Are you genuinely ignorant of the science or do you choose to blatantly distort and lie?

As for we scientists being zealots, actually you, Steve Goddard, are the true zealot here, and your comments made in a public forum will come back to haunt you. I just hope that you live long enough to be forced to eat your words over and over again.

But none of you appear interested in discussing actual science, so I am wasting my time talking with this group of religious zealots.

This is hilarious coming from a regular at WUWT, someone who is so arrogant and ignorant that he believes that established science is wrong about thermodynamics and he is right. Just who do think you are?

I love it when D-K denialists like Goddard start digging. The key point he’s failed to address is that he’s being super-selective over which features in which trends are and aren’t meaningful but can present no scientific justification for his logic beyond “because I said so”.

But besides that, I don’t see what his thesis is. If he’s trying to imply that this is an indicator that the world is cooling down, then that is nonsensical; there are plenty of actual temperature measurements to say that it isn’t, so that just tells you that snow cover isn’t an accurate proxy for global temperature on these timescales. His claims to have invalidated GCMs similarly don’t wash because snow cover is hardly a key indicator of model performance, especially not when he’s seemingly basing his argument on one season’s data and a ten-year-old quote.

So it inevitably descends into the predictable name-calling, accusations of religious thinking, shouts of ‘ad hom’ and the classic “you’re obviously not clever enough to understand”. Yeah, real scientific.

52 Steve Goddard: “Monday, 20 March 2000 According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “

And in the rest of that year 2000 article you linked to, he goes on to say (yes everyone, you roughly know what’s coming)…

“Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.”

Hmm, it certainly caused chaos here last winter, and within only half the time. Was he therefore half right or twice as right?

The Arctic is still running well below freezing, and as a result there just isn’t much happening, except for an odd discrepancy that has developed between NSIDC and NORSEX related to the 2007 minimum extent.

Ice extent as measured by NSIDC and JAXA is dropping like a stone, and the Cryosphere Today folks show the same in area.

Of course, Goddard loves NORSEX as it’s a new source which makes it easier to say things like “ice extent has returned to normal” (since they only have a few years of data, it conveniently allows cherry-picking the era of extremely low summer ice extent as “normal”).

The AMSRE data show Arctic ice extent in 2010 to be very close (slightly higher even ) to what it was in 2005 at this time. We are also losing that “easy” ice which grew during that late season cold snap, which was of course very thin when the melt season started.

The true canary in the coal mine is the stunning loss of ice volume, especially in recent years– things are not looking good down the road. Goddard’s ‘recovery’ is an illusion.

But wasn’t he giving an interview to a UK newspaper in his capacity as a UK scientist at East Anglia?

The lead paragraph from the Independent article, with a couple of other snippets…

“Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives…
[…[]
The effects of snow-free winter in Britain are already becoming apparent…
[…]
Michael Jeacock, a Cambridgeshire local historian, added that a generation was growing up “without experiencing one of the greatest joys and privileges of living in this part of the world – open-air skating”.
[…]
and the 19th century poet laureate Robert Bridges, who wrote in “London Snow” of it,…”

There’s a mention of Europe by a Dutch scientist, but I don’t think the world had anything to do with what Viner was talking about, just dear old Blighty. And he seems to have gotten it at least half right so far, unlike a certain regular from Comical Anth’ny’s.

The AMSRE data show Arctic ice extent in 2010 to be very close (slightly higher even ) to what it was in 2005 at this time. We are also losing that “easy” ice which grew during that late season cold snap, which was of course very thin when the melt season started.

The true canary in the coal mine is the stunning loss of ice volume, especially in recent years– things are not looking good down the road. Goddard’s ‘recovery’ is an illusion.

“After 25 years in the university environment and 11 years running a small business dealing with the public, for me the principle of Ockham’s Razor was expressed in “Do not assume malice when an explanation of stupidity is sufficient.””

At least Steve has the balls to predict this year’s minimum Arctic sea ice extent will be 500.000 km2 above last year’s (which was 5.25 million square km). I hope he’s wrong just to see if he’ll admit it. It would be much better all in all if he were right, of course.

I bet you that by “minimum” arctic sea ice extent, he means minimum winter arctic sea ice extent, since by his arguments here he doesn’t consider summer ice extent to be a valid measurement because it doesn’t snow in the summer.

Thanks Shub @75 for showing that the long-tern trend in April sea ice extent is indeed down. TS and dhogaza were talking about current extent in May, not April, and TS did provide a caveat for his statement.

Also, see my post @74.

So shub, how do you feel about Goddard and Taylor and Easterbrook distorting/lying/deceiving? I mean you are highly critical of errors in the IPCC or alleged “misleading” statements therein, so are you going to show yourself to be impartial and condemn the three guilty parties here?

I fear you are missing the point. Why did Goddard cite something (52) about UK winters on a blog that is Australian-based and discusses climate world-wide? That is the issue, not the quote itself, which we all know is about the UK.

The Arctic is still running well below freezing, and as a result there just isn’t much happening, except for an odd discrepancy that has developed between NSIDC and NORSEX related to the 2007 extent. Read on.

nothing happening, apart from a major drop in sea ice extend and area, and a continous drop in arctic sea ice volume.

AMSR is the dataset, that is linked on the sidebar of WuWt. it slightly fell out of use, since it is showing a drop…

The four major ice extent indices continue to diverge.

Goddard actually doesn t know what “diverge” means. all four datasets show a steep decline. the single one showing a little less decline from the “recovery2 postulated in countless WuWt posts, is the one dataset that he prefers now! go figure!

As usual Dave (the Idiot) Andrews got things all mixed up. What he mean to say was:

“So I have implicit faith in the AGW deniers and think they act in a purely scientific way into which global politics do not enter.”

Why do you you continue to be so dishonest in your posts? What do your friends (assuming you actually have any) and family think of your dishonesty? Keep up the good work, you sure show everyone just how far out of touch with reality you deniers actually are.

In a virtuoso display of basic incompetence, Steve Goddard continues to falsely imply that people here have described summers as “snowy”. Go on, try it yourself – you may not know your browser has a handy “Find” or “Search” function that can take you to every occurrence of the word “summer” in the whole webpage.

And that’s before we note that the description of *summer snow cover* in this post was “declining”, not “snowy” or “increasing” or the like…

we will all sit and wait for his evidence for a “step change”. (this is becoming pretty popular with denialists…)

It’s certainly a meme beloved of David Stockwell and his Climate Sceptics Party mate Anthony Cox (aka cohenite). Apparently if there is not an incremental increase in temperature over a short period of time, then it is not the emissions of CO2 by humans that cause the problem.

Sounds fine, but anyone who understands complex natural systems, and the relatively fast rate of human CO2 emissions compared with the response time of large natural systems, would not be surprised to see a progression from one [meta-stable state](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability) to a new equilibrium that resembles a ‘step’ rather than an incremental graduation.

Or, as I suspect hindsight will demonstrate, a hybrid of the two types of progressions.

And wherever or whenever there is any hint of a step in climate system responses, I suspect that there will always be a denialatus right behind, hooting and slapping the ground and ejaculating that this somehow disproves human-induced global warming.